that it has been told once at our expense. Only a few years ago 

 the present representative of one of the most influential of our 

 founders brought into our neighbourhood a distinguished orni- 

 thologist and thought well of showing him our Museum. The 

 latter had eyes for nothing but our bird-cases, but whilst he was 

 inspecting their inhabitants in detail, leaving no one of them 

 unexamined, in some corner or other, he stumbled upon an example 

 of the blackbird species, decked in dappled plumage, which so 

 excited his curiosity, that the case had to be opened for him to 

 handle it. On turning up a wing of this apparent lusus natures 

 he detected that the white feathers it contained were fixed there 

 by glue, and he pointed out what he viewed as a hoax with an ex- 

 clamation not flattering to the Society itself. An implication of the 

 sort falls harmless upon a Society that has been chosen as a medium 

 of publication by so many able writers on the Fauna of the West of 

 England, and whose journals comprise so long a series of graphic 

 notices of the Ornithology of Cornwall from the pen of a gentle- 

 man who has made the subject the recreative study of his life. 



In these remarks I have assumed, for the sake of the lesson 

 conveyed, that the feathers glued in were false ones, though the 

 bird-stuffer may merely have used glue to repair a wing injured 

 by shot. It is easy to imagine, however, that we might be more 

 obnoxious to such misadventures as the one narrated in some of 

 the other characters we have to sustain than in that of naturalists : 

 — exampli gratid, in playing the part of archseologists. That such 

 enthusiasts have been a standing butt for the sceptical, Sir Walter 

 Scott's Antiquary and Dickens' Pickwick Papers testify in the 

 realms of fiction, and more recently, in those of history, the story 

 of Flint Jack appears in ridicule of geologists as soon as they 

 dreamed of excelling archaeologists in their own investigations ; 

 and at this moment Mr. Shapira and other agents of the Prussian 

 Government stand on the defensive against a grave charge of M. 

 Ganneau's, that they have acquired, at a heavy cost, a lot of inscribed 

 and other pottery, under the persuasion that they were Moabite 

 Antiquities gleaned by intelligent Arabs ; whereas, in reality, they 

 are spick-and-span new from a clandestine manufactory in Jerus- 

 alem. At all events, by indulging in these side glances before 

 turning our backs upon this uninviting topic, we may derive the 

 consolation that, whatever mischances may befall us in this kind, 

 we shall not be without reputable companions in misfortune. 



The true moral to be drawn from the foregoing avowals is, 

 that an establishment like a museum, which is dependent for its 

 success upon voluntary support, ought rather to be judged by 

 what it accomplishes than by flaws in its superintendence. It 

 may some day be of consequence to this Institution that this 



